De Alexander

Whatever the Vice President knew, or thought he knew, was poured into those eighty pages with a staggering fulness and disregard of consequences that startled the political world and captivated all lovers of the brilliant and sensational…

It was novel, it was brilliantly able, and it drove the knife deeper and surer than its predecessors.

The letters of Junius did not make themselves felt in English political life more than did this pamphlet in the political circles of New York.

Burr's conduct during those momentous weeks when Federalists did their utmost to make him President, gave his rivals ample ground for creating the belief that he had evidenced open contempt for the principles of honest dealing.

It is doubtful if the framers of the Constitution recognised the enormous power they had given it.

The strength of his intellect no one disputed, and if his political affiliations seemed to warp his judgment in affairs of state, it was none the less impartial and enlightened when brought to bear on difficult questions of law.

Hamilton thought him a dangerous man, guided neither by patriotism nor principle, who might at any moment throttle constitutional government and set up a dictatorship after the manner of Napoleon.

At forty-five he stood one step only below the highest place in the nation, and now by a unanimous vote he became president of the second constitutional convention of the Empire State.

But great as was this diplomatic triumph he lived long enough to realise that the failure to include Canada within the young Republic's domain was ground for just criticism.

The crowning act of his life was undoubtedly the peace treaty of 1783.

In a word, it may be said that what George Washington was in the field, in council, and as President, John Jay was in legislative halls, in diplomatic circles, and as a jurist.

His work was criticised, often severely, at times justly, but his character for honesty and goodness continued to the end without blemish.

Nevertheless, it was the purity of his life, the probity of his actions, the excellence of his public purposes, that commended him to the affectionate regard of everybody.

Yet he was a noble illustration of what may be accomplished by an indomitable will, backed by a fearless independence and a power to dominate people in spite of antagonism of great and successful rivals.

Attachment to his interests was the one supreme and only test of fitness for favours or friendship, and at one time or another he quarrelled with every friend who sought to retain independence of action.

Clinton relied not more upon men than upon measures, and in the end the one thing that made him superior to all his contemporaries of the nineteenth century was a never-failing belief in the possibility of success along lines marked out…

He was, rather, a man of action--self-willed, self-reliant, independent--as ambitious as Burr without his slippery ways, and as determined as Hamilton with all his ability to criticise an opponent.

He was not a mere day-dreamer, a theorist, a philosopher, a scholar, although he possessed the gifts of each.

Unlike most other men of his party, he did not rely wholly upon discipline and organisation, or upon party fealty and courtesy.

In spite of his love for science, DeWitt Clinton was a born politician, with all the characteristic incongruities incident to such a life.

Whatever was fair for Federalists then, they argued, could not be unfair for Republicans now.

Gradually the truth began to dawn as men talked and compared notes, and before three months had elapsed Jefferson's estimate of Burr's character corresponded with Hamilton's.

He admitted that he was far more artful than wise, far more dexterous than able, but held that artfulness and dexterity were objections rather than recommendations, while he thought a systematic statesman should have a theory.

In vain did Hamilton combat these points, insisting that Burr was a man of extreme and irregular ambition, selfish to a degree which even excluded social affection, and decidedly profligate.

Burr must become, in fact, the man of our party; and if he acts ill, we must share in the blame and disgrace.